


Cryptobiosis

by a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), no actual death, themes of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 13:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6986542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words/pseuds/a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a glass tank in Wakanda, Steve comes to watch over someone who, for all intents and purposes, is currently dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cryptobiosis

**Author's Note:**

> Cryptobiosis: a recoverable state in which an organism's metabolic rate is undetectable, as a response to adverse conditions such as freezing, dessication and anoxia, observed most commonly in invertebrates.

  
Steve listens to the machines keeping Bucky cold throbbing in the thick, hot darkness of the rainforest. Even the air conditioned room feels stifling to him after a winter in a safehouse in upstate New York.

He's been here an hour, but he can't quite bring himself to look at the ice crusted cocoon. Not yet. He watches the forest outside instead, the vague outline of the tops of trees and the inky black of the forest beneath the canopy. Sometimes something, or two somethings glint in the distance. The forest awoke at sunset and has since been peering in at the strange sight of two men, one in a cage of frozen glass, the other peering out at the void beyond. Once, slit pupils had blinked at him through the night, before disappearing into the woods.

Finally when he looks at Bucky, it is only by mistake. His eyes are following those of a small tree creature and before he knows it, he catches Bucky's reflection in the glass, quite clear   
with its blue artificial lighting against the black background outside.

There's no one else here, no technician, no guards. Just Steve, and Bucky, if you could call Bucky here.

Steve wonders if maybe his hair and beard could grow whilst in stasis, or if Bucky had really been looking so unshaven before he went in. So uncared for. He wonders how he could have forgotten.

He still looks clean, but clean in the way that a hosepipe and a bar of soap could achieve, not groomed. The blue light caught his face in planes and curves and not with a greasy sheen.

Steve closes his eyes for a minute and then crosses to the air conditioning unit. He turns it down as far as it will go, and waits.

The unit whirs loudly in complaint, drowning out the sounds of him rummaging through drawers and cupboards as it struggles to reach the promised 10°C.

By the time it begins to quiet a little, Steve's skin is prickling with cold as his sweat turns into a punishment. He shouldn't be here, shouldn't be doing this. He doesn't even really know why he is, only that he couldn't stop himself.

The buttons are labelled in English, but he doesn't even need to press one, only to lift the lid a little way before the motor kicks in and opens it for him.

And then the barrier is gone, and he can touch Bucky's death cold skin, the flesh unpleasantly firm beneath his fingers. When they catch on stubble, Bucky's skin resists the drag like cold meat unwilling to be moved.

He hadn't realised it, hadn't been prepared for the feeling of Bucky's stiff lower lip relenting and giving slowly under his thumb - he hadn't been ready to come here and to touch the person he loved most in the world only to find him the closest thing to death there ever was. If nobody thaws Bucky, he will never wake, worse than comatose, barely alive by any definition Steve has ever read.

The tears falling from Steve's eyes leave cold trails down his cheeks and freeze into white ice on Bucky's neck. Steve tried to brush it off, but all he can do is gasp for the cold air that burns his throat, reminding him of the asthma inducing winters he and Bucky had stumbled through in years long past, bundled against the snow and the ice.

"I'm sorry Bucky," he murmurs, pulling himself together. "I'm sorry I couldn't do better by you."

Trembling, he unwraps a sterile scalpel and raises it to Bucky's stubbled neck. The blade scrapes across the stiff skin, picking up a thin coat of ice crystals that have formed there.

Carefully, too carefully even, Steve shaves off the brittle hairs, working one-by-one in some places just in case he were to slip and cut Bucky open, or worse, to somehow shatter him, even though his unyielding body is stilled but not crystalline-solid.

The loose hairs stick to the wet blade and he scrapes them off on his own sleeve until it is covered in a patch of icy, broken hairs, and Bucky's face is as clean shaven as he is ever likely to get it.

Steve brushes his locks from his eyes, even Bucky's hair feeling unnaturally cold. He looks younger now, less worried somehow. Even more like someone has been cleaning him up for an open casket.

A small red light begins flashing on the control panel, and a quiet beeping starts up, telling Steve he doesn't have time to linger.

He pulls back from the cocoon, fingers leaving clear marks on the frosted door, but he can't will himself to close it, to leave Bucky here, alone in the cold and almost dead.

Another light begins flashing, and another louder beep. He doesn't have much time.

He leans forward, unable to make himself go back, and presses his lips to Bucky's forehead, wondering if somehow Bucky will feel his warmth. He feels an unpleasant connection to people kissing loved ones in a morgue.

Then he moves away, and presses the button labelled "close", because his shaking hands can't move the door by themselves.

And if the staff see him trembling on his way out, they know it must have just been shivering from how unbearably cold someone had accidentally set the thermostat for Bucky's room.

 

 


End file.
